"Prohibition was introduced as a fraud; it has been nursed as a fraud. It is wrapped in the livery of Heaven, but it comes to serve the devil. It comes to regulate by law our appetites and our daily lives. It comes to tear down liberty and build up fanaticism, hypocrisy, and intolerance. It comes to confiscate by legislative decree the property of many of our fellow citizens. It comes to send spies, detectives, and informers into our homes; to have us arrested and carried before courts and condemned to fines and imprisonments. It comes to dissipate the sunlight of happiness, peace, and prosperity in which we are now living and to fill our land with alienations, estrangements, and bitterness. It comes to bring us evil – only evil – and that continually. Let us rise in our might as one and overwhelm it with such indignation that we shall never hear of it again as long as grass grows and water runs."
— Roger Q. Mills of Texas, 1887, quoted repeatedly during a December 1914 debate in Congress over alcohol Prohibition
It's time for us all to stop being ignorant hypocrites and start being TRUE conservatives!
Pragmatic libertarians (minimal-statists) and "true" Conservatives agree that many, if not most, of society's problems are caused by government usurping choices that could better be made by individuals themselves, and that government is just about the worst way of doing almost anything. Where libertarianism normally parts company with "fake" conservatism is over moral issues. But a true conservative would have no problem with agreeing that what people do with their own bodies, and especially in the privacy of their own home, should be supremely their business and that anything else would entail ignoring the basic tenet of limited government.
Fake-Conservatism on the other hand has much in common with socialism - Socialists (leftists) and Fake-Conservatives appear to harbor the belief that nature does not exist and that any human can be "re-educated" into being anything society wishes. Leftists therefore tend to believe that little boys can be conditioned into preferring dolls over toy soldiers, and similarly, Fake-conservatives believe that adults can be coerced into choosing alcohol over marijuana. A true conservative, just like a pragmatic libertarian, would immediately reject both ideas as nonsense.
If you support prohibition then you are NOT a conservative.
Conservative principles QUITE CLEARLY ARE:
1) Limited, locally controlled government.
2) Individual liberty coupled with personal responsibility.
3) Free enterprise.
4) A strong national defense.
5) Fiscal responsibility.
Prohibition is actually an authoritarian War On The Economy, Constitution and All Civic Institutions of our once great nation.
* Colombia, Peru, Mexico or Afghanistan with their coca leaves, marijuana buds or poppy sap are not igniting temptation in the minds of our weak, innocent citizens. These countries are duly responding to the enormous demand that comes from within our own borders. Invading or destroying these countries, thus creating more hate, violence, instability, injustice and corruption, will not fix our problem.
* A rather large majority of people will always feel the need to use drugs such as heroin, opium, nicotine, amphetamines, alcohol, sugar, or caffeine.
* The massive majority of adults who use drugs do so recreationally - getting high at the weekend then up for work on a Monday morning.
* Apart from the huge percentage of people addicted to both sugar and caffeine, a small minority of adults (5%) will always experience the use of other drugs as problematic. - approx. 3% are dependent on alcohol, and 1.5% dependent on other drugs.
* Just as it was impossible to prevent alcohol from being produced and used in the U.S. in the 1920s, so too, it is equally impossible to prevent any of the aforementioned drugs from being produced, distributed and widely used by those who desire to do so.
* Prohibition kills more people and ruins more lives than the drugs it prohibits.
* Due to Prohibition (historically proven to be an utter failure at every level), the availability of most of these mood-altering drugs has become so universal and unfettered that in any city of the civilized world, any one of us would be able to procure practically any drug we wish within an hour.
* Throughout history, the prohibition of any mind-altering substance has always exploded usage rates, overcrowded jails, fueled organized crime, created rampant corruption of law-enforcement - even whole governments, while inducing an incalculable amount of suffering and death.
* The involvement of the CIA in running Heroin from Vietnam, Southeast Asia and Afghanistan and Cocaine from Central America has been well documented by the 1989 Kerry Committee report, academic researchers Alfred McCoy and Peter Dale Scott, and the late journalist Gary Webb.
* It's not even possible to keep drugs out of prisons, but prohibitionists wish to waste hundreds of billions of our money in an utterly futile attempt to keep them off our streets.
* The United States jails a larger percentage of it's own citizens than any other country in the world, including those run by the worst totalitarian regimes, yet it has far higher use/addiction rates than most other countries.
* Prohibition is the "Goose that laid the golden egg" and the lifeblood of terrorists as well as drug cartels. Both the Taliban and the terrorists of al Qaeda derive their main income from the prohibition-inflated value of the opium poppy. An estimated 44 % of the heroin produced in Afghanistan, with an estimated annual destination value of US $ 27 Billion, transits through Pakistan. Prohibition has essentially destroyed Pakistan's legal economy and social fabric. - We may be about to witness the planet's first civil war in a nation with nuclear capabilities. - Kindly Google: 'A GLOBAL OVERVIEW OF NARCOTICS-FUNDED TERRORIST GROUPS' Only those opposed, or willing to ignore these facts, want things the way they are.
* The future depends on whether or not enough of us are willing to take a long look at the tragic results of prohibition. If we continue to skirt the primary issue while refusing to address the root problem then we can expect no other result than a worsening of the current dire situation. - Good intentions, wishful thinking and pseudoscience are no match for the immutable realities of human nature.
* The urge to save humanity is almost always a false-face for the urge to rule it. - H. L. Mencken (1880-1956) American editor, essayist and philologist.
Sources of Funding from 1988-91
Extracted from Federal Tax Returns
(figures are approximate)
Pharmaceutical Firms
J. Seward Johnson, Sr. Charitable Trusts --- $1.1 million
Du Pont --- 125,000
Proctor and Gamble Fund --- 120,000
Bristol-Myers Squibb Foundation --- 115,000
Johnson & Johnson --- 100,000
Merck Foundation --- 85,000
Hoffman-LaRoche --- 75,000
Tobacco and Liquor Firms
Phillip Morris --- 125,000
Anheuser-Busch --- 100,000
RJ Reynolds --- 100,000
American Brands --- 100,000
No amount of money, police powers, weaponry, wishful thinking or pseudo-science will make our streets safer, only an end to prohibition can do that. How much longer are you willing to foolishly risk your own survival by continuing to ignore the obvious, historically confirmed solution?
If you support prohibition then you've helped trigger the worst crime wave in history.
If you support prohibition you've a helped create a black market with massive incentives to hook both adults and children alike.
If you support prohibition you've helped to make these dangerous substances available in schools and prisons.
If you support prohibition you've helped raise gang warfare to a level not seen since the days of alcohol bootlegging.
Techdirt has not posted any stories submitted by Malcolm Kyle.
Nothing changes
"Prohibition was introduced as a fraud; it has been nursed as a fraud. It is wrapped in the livery of Heaven, but it comes to serve the devil. It comes to regulate by law our appetites and our daily lives. It comes to tear down liberty and build up fanaticism, hypocrisy, and intolerance. It comes to confiscate by legislative decree the property of many of our fellow citizens. It comes to send spies, detectives, and informers into our homes; to have us arrested and carried before courts and condemned to fines and imprisonments. It comes to dissipate the sunlight of happiness, peace, and prosperity in which we are now living and to fill our land with alienations, estrangements, and bitterness. It comes to bring us evil – only evil – and that continually. Let us rise in our might as one and overwhelm it with such indignation that we shall never hear of it again as long as grass grows and water runs."
— Roger Q. Mills of Texas, 1887, quoted repeatedly during a December 1914 debate in Congress over alcohol Prohibition
Enough!!!
It's time for us all to stop being ignorant hypocrites and start being TRUE conservatives!
Pragmatic libertarians (minimal-statists) and "true" Conservatives agree that many, if not most, of society's problems are caused by government usurping choices that could better be made by individuals themselves, and that government is just about the worst way of doing almost anything. Where libertarianism normally parts company with "fake" conservatism is over moral issues. But a true conservative would have no problem with agreeing that what people do with their own bodies, and especially in the privacy of their own home, should be supremely their business and that anything else would entail ignoring the basic tenet of limited government.
Fake-Conservatism on the other hand has much in common with socialism - Socialists (leftists) and Fake-Conservatives appear to harbor the belief that nature does not exist and that any human can be "re-educated" into being anything society wishes. Leftists therefore tend to believe that little boys can be conditioned into preferring dolls over toy soldiers, and similarly, Fake-conservatives believe that adults can be coerced into choosing alcohol over marijuana. A true conservative, just like a pragmatic libertarian, would immediately reject both ideas as nonsense.
If you support prohibition then you are NOT a conservative.
Conservative principles QUITE CLEARLY ARE:
1) Limited, locally controlled government.
2) Individual liberty coupled with personal responsibility.
3) Free enterprise.
4) A strong national defense.
5) Fiscal responsibility.
Prohibition is actually an authoritarian War On The Economy, Constitution and All Civic Institutions of our once great nation.
It's been very effective if your a criminal or a terrorist
Some simple facts:
* Colombia, Peru, Mexico or Afghanistan with their coca leaves, marijuana buds or poppy sap are not igniting temptation in the minds of our weak, innocent citizens. These countries are duly responding to the enormous demand that comes from within our own borders. Invading or destroying these countries, thus creating more hate, violence, instability, injustice and corruption, will not fix our problem.
* A rather large majority of people will always feel the need to use drugs such as heroin, opium, nicotine, amphetamines, alcohol, sugar, or caffeine.
* The massive majority of adults who use drugs do so recreationally - getting high at the weekend then up for work on a Monday morning.
* Apart from the huge percentage of people addicted to both sugar and caffeine, a small minority of adults (5%) will always experience the use of other drugs as problematic. - approx. 3% are dependent on alcohol, and 1.5% dependent on other drugs.
* Just as it was impossible to prevent alcohol from being produced and used in the U.S. in the 1920s, so too, it is equally impossible to prevent any of the aforementioned drugs from being produced, distributed and widely used by those who desire to do so.
* Prohibition kills more people and ruins more lives than the drugs it prohibits.
* Due to Prohibition (historically proven to be an utter failure at every level), the availability of most of these mood-altering drugs has become so universal and unfettered that in any city of the civilized world, any one of us would be able to procure practically any drug we wish within an hour.
* Throughout history, the prohibition of any mind-altering substance has always exploded usage rates, overcrowded jails, fueled organized crime, created rampant corruption of law-enforcement - even whole governments, while inducing an incalculable amount of suffering and death.
* The involvement of the CIA in running Heroin from Vietnam, Southeast Asia and Afghanistan and Cocaine from Central America has been well documented by the 1989 Kerry Committee report, academic researchers Alfred McCoy and Peter Dale Scott, and the late journalist Gary Webb.
* It's not even possible to keep drugs out of prisons, but prohibitionists wish to waste hundreds of billions of our money in an utterly futile attempt to keep them off our streets.
* The United States jails a larger percentage of it's own citizens than any other country in the world, including those run by the worst totalitarian regimes, yet it has far higher use/addiction rates than most other countries.
* Prohibition is the "Goose that laid the golden egg" and the lifeblood of terrorists as well as drug cartels. Both the Taliban and the terrorists of al Qaeda derive their main income from the prohibition-inflated value of the opium poppy. An estimated 44 % of the heroin produced in Afghanistan, with an estimated annual destination value of US $ 27 Billion, transits through Pakistan. Prohibition has essentially destroyed Pakistan's legal economy and social fabric. - We may be about to witness the planet's first civil war in a nation with nuclear capabilities. - Kindly Google: 'A GLOBAL OVERVIEW OF NARCOTICS-FUNDED TERRORIST GROUPS' Only those opposed, or willing to ignore these facts, want things the way they are.
* The future depends on whether or not enough of us are willing to take a long look at the tragic results of prohibition. If we continue to skirt the primary issue while refusing to address the root problem then we can expect no other result than a worsening of the current dire situation. - Good intentions, wishful thinking and pseudoscience are no match for the immutable realities of human nature.
* The urge to save humanity is almost always a false-face for the urge to rule it. - H. L. Mencken (1880-1956) American editor, essayist and philologist.
This is your Pharma Industry on Drugs
Partnership for a Drug Free America
Sources of Funding from 1988-91
Extracted from Federal Tax Returns
(figures are approximate)
Pharmaceutical Firms
J. Seward Johnson, Sr. Charitable Trusts --- $1.1 million
Du Pont --- 125,000
Proctor and Gamble Fund --- 120,000
Bristol-Myers Squibb Foundation --- 115,000
Johnson & Johnson --- 100,000
Merck Foundation --- 85,000
Hoffman-LaRoche --- 75,000
Tobacco and Liquor Firms
Phillip Morris --- 125,000
Anheuser-Busch --- 100,000
RJ Reynolds --- 100,000
American Brands --- 100,000
prohibition sucks
No amount of money, police powers, weaponry, wishful thinking or pseudo-science will make our streets safer, only an end to prohibition can do that. How much longer are you willing to foolishly risk your own survival by continuing to ignore the obvious, historically confirmed solution?
If you support prohibition then you've helped trigger the worst crime wave in history.
If you support prohibition you've a helped create a black market with massive incentives to hook both adults and children alike.
If you support prohibition you've helped to make these dangerous substances available in schools and prisons.
If you support prohibition you've helped raise gang warfare to a level not seen since the days of alcohol bootlegging.